Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to a group of Columbia students on Thursday for a CNBC town hall and question-and-answer session. The business giants discussed topics ranging from capitalism and the state of the economy to Goldman Sachs, Apple, and Google, and they were decidedly positive in their outlooks. When asked whether at any point over the last year they’d doubted capitalism and the American “way of life,” both expressed confidence in the system.

The watchdog charged with policing the massive government bailout says that he’s conducting 65 investigations of possible fraud in the program, more than triple the number of probes he opened six months ago. Neil Barofsky, speaking at the Bloomberg Washington Summit on Thursday, added that the probes range from complicated securities transactions to mortgage-fraud cases.

Peter Galbraith wanted to do well by doing good. He passed himself off as a diplomat who was helping the Kurds to write their constitution and to develop their oil fields.

Have you heard? Wall Street — stoked by never-ending taxpayer largesse — is again chugging down the rails.

The oil patch mumbo jumbo continues unabated. Today Rex Tillerson, The CEO of the nation’s largest oil company, Exxon, took a minute or two today to instruct us about the reasons for the current price of oil (CNBC Weak Dollar Adding $20 to Oil:Exxon CEO). This is the same personage who a while back informed us, his customers that “ethanol is moonshine”

As part of the Roosevelt Institute’s 10-part series on the Jobs Crisis, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog from Nov. 12-25, I was asked to reflect on what can be done to get Americans working again. Here’s my take